Category Archives: Country/Bluegrass
Chris Marshall – August Light (In Music We Trust)
Chris Marshall
August Light
In Music We Trust
Rating: 4.8 out of 5
Link: http://www.chrismarshallmusic.com/
Chris Marshall sings about the soil like he was kicking up dust in the Tex-Arkana landscape. It’s that crying plea from the slide guitar. It’s the back porch strumming. It’s the voice that exemplifies an emotion of a simpler time and a more thought-provoking array of beauty and place. The smell of fresh, cut grass. The plow in the field. The sweat on the brow. However, for Marshall, that simpler life lies in the Northeast in Portland and the soil comes from an upbringing from being the son of a minister.
“There’s a world that is just outside of your metaphorical, metaphysical..,” you get the point. And that point is that Chris Marshall’s August Light travels beyond the typical and revels in the experience of the world spinning around. Marshall’s music is here to help put things into perspective.
The song, “Look Out The Window” is the one that has sparked the most popularity and is just a hint of the solid base in which this album rests on. Marshall does not go out of his way to impress you, nor does he express any glitz and glamour. Marshall’s alt-country aura is that of purity and that says a lot.
From front to back, August Light is a great listen when you need things to slow down and you want to kick back and relax with the finer points of summer just in reach, be it drenched in lemonade, the beer tap working overtime and the county fair just down the road. And if you just need something to get you through the day, Marshall has something just for you.
Star Anna And The Laughing Dogs – Alone In This Together (Local 638)
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 3:48 — 4.4MB)
MP3: Star Anna And The Laughing Dogs – Alone In This Together (Radio Edit)
Star Anna And The Laughing Dogs
Alone In This Together
Local 638
Rating: 3.2 out of 5
Link: http://staranna.com/home.cfm
Star Anna has the voice that sounds like it has experienced many hard-edged lives yet fragile enough to break at any given moment. And not that “quarter after 1, I’m a little drunk and I need you” fragility. I am talking about emotions like glass sitting at the edge of the world and about ready to fall off fragility. It’s what makes this collection of country rock and folk meanderings a curiousity.
Alone In This Together is really not that great of an album, or so that’s what it starts out to seem. “Shine” is just your typical moderate country rock song that shows little of the true emotion of Star Anna. It’s when you get to the title track where you discover the true charm of this singer.
It’s when she incorporates soul into her country music demeanor where it clicks; about as much as when Ray Charles brought country into his soul music.
“Bird Without Wings” is a beautiful back porch. It’s when she transforms from gravel-rough storyteller to night crooner in the melody that pulls everything together. But it is nice when The Laughing Dogs turn out that Austin grit on “Time” like they were Escovedo’s backing band. Or that late-night intimacy on “Gold And Silver.”
Dig deep in the sand, and you will pull out a gem of an album that bears needing some polishing, but glimmers in its own right.
Water Tower Bucket Boys – Sole Kitchen (Brick and Mortar Distribution)
Water Tower Bucket Boys
Sole Kitchen
Brick and Mortar Distribution
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Link: www.watertowerbucketboys.com
Listening to Water Tower Bucket Boys gives me the itch for Hillbilly Happy Hour at The Melody Inn (http://www.melodyindy.com/). Fringe bluegrass and foot stompers get together at the historic bar for some end-of -the-week hootenanny, and this album comes at a perfect time.
The only difference is that you will want to shed those shoes and squish yer barefeet in the bluegrass. Trade in those tall boys and bottlenecks for Mason Jars because “Crooked Road” is a dedication to the corn whiskey and moonshine that stain the foothills.
Slim Cessna’s Auto Club are to the Dead Kennedys what the Water Tower Bucket Boys are to Prince. These sexy finger pickers take the essence of Bill Monroe and up the ante like Ronnie Dawson and a bag full of pixie sticks but with some Howard Crockett suaveness.
Okay maybe “Telegraph” and “Tequila With Lime” celebrate the slower side of life, but “London Breakdown” and “Blackbird Pickin At A Squirrel” are straight-up rockers and will have the house a’ shakin’ before can get that first “Yee-Haw” out.
Sole Kitchen is top-notch work by a group of excellent and professional musicians who know how to titter on the edge while maintaining a firm foundation in the bluegrass tradition.
Kort – Invariable Heartache (City Slang)
MP3: Kort – Pickin’ Wild Mountain Berries (from the album Invariable Heartache)
Kort
Invariable Heartache
City Slang
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Link: http://blog.cityslang.com/?p=1114
As popular country music continues to lose its ever-loving charm and Nashville dives deeper within itself as the glitz and glamor of Hollywood-laden stars and incapable alternative country cross overs are all the rage at the top, it’s as if country music has switched magnetic poles and are experiencing a role reversal.
But there are some who are preserving the roots of country music simply for the music itself, and let’s face it, good nostalgia. Cortney Tidwell and Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner do just that with their collaboration Kort.
Invariable Heartache is filled with gems that shine by the glare of broken hearts and lonely nights filled with 11 tracks from the Chart Records catalog. When you hear Wagner’s trembling deep baritone on “April’s Fool,” you immediately think to yourself instant classic that will be forever be lost in time.
Speaking of classic, the two come together to re-create the Conway Twitty song “Pickin’ Wild Mountain Berries,” that became a duet with Loretta Lynn. Their version blends more soft pop sheen to the slight tinge of bluegrass that keeps the song moving. It gives off the glow of a softer demeanor, but like a good memory, the imagery is still as powerful.
And when Tidwell takes over on the microphone, the notes on “I Can’t Sleep With You” and “Only A Memory Away” stretch out into the heavens that rain down with the cries of the pedal steel. If this is heartache, then it fits like a great pair of denims.
You want to hear what true American country music sounds like, this is it.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 3:35 — 8.3MB)
Sonny Smith – Sonny & The Sandwiches (Music Review)
Sonny Smith
Sonny & The Sandwiches
100 Records
Rating: 3 out of 5
Link: http://www.endlessnest.com/store/index.php#sonnysand
You smell that? Smells a lot like the remnants of tar from the train tracks down the road on a hot, summer day. But it’s not a hot, summer day. It’s 10 degrees outside and snow is on the ground.
Must be the rusty strings that illuminates from Sonny Smith, like a house adorned with Christmas lights or that Sunday afternoon after a swim down at the river.
Sonny & The Sandwiches’ rawness and acoustic simplicity makes me appreciate their spirit, but makes me want more out of them. Only four songs for them to make an impression, Sonny & The Sandwiches warms you like a round of bluegrass spirituals. That’s how “Throw My Ashes From This Pier When I Die” plays out. “Cathedral In The Desert” sounds like a cassette of an old Grateful Dead bootleg you bought out of some random van.
These are not exceptional tunes, but the band’s modesty plays into their music and that alone gives the sound enough to give them a try.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:20 — 2.7MB)
